No question, mobile devices have transformed home health care delivery. Highly portable laptops, tablets and smartphones make it simple and convenient for nurses, therapists and other clinicians to document vital data, access patient records and check drug interactions – right in patient homes.

Hospitals seeking to conquer the stubbornly persistent problem of patient safety can start by expanding the adoption of barcoding technology into all areas of the hospital, from the patient room to the lab to the pharmacy. Although barcoding outcomes to date may have fallen short of expectations, it’s important to recognize that both the technology and utilization are maturing, providing the opportunity to make great strides toward improved safety and quality of care at a fraction of the time and cost investment required for an enterprise-wide electronic health record (EHR) implementation.

Here’s a statistic that will stop you in your tracks: There has been virtually no improvement in patient safety over the past 15 years, according to testimony by health experts at a U.S. Senate subcommittee hearing this past summer.

Whether you’re suffering from a broken bone or a life-threatening illness, a trip to the emergency room is always a scary prospect. But what happens when an ER is faced with more patients than it can accommodate? Between 1995 and 2010, annual ER visits in the U.S. grew by 34 percent, while the number of hospitals with ERs declined by 11 percent. From long wait times to sky-high medical costs, overcrowding puts undue pressure on patients, providers and administrators when efficient, high-quality care matters most.

When care providers at Androscoggin Home Care & Hospice, the largest Home Care & Hospice agency in Maine, initially launched their telehealth program, they were quickly able to see positive results from utilizing Honeywell’s Genesis family of remote patient monitoring devices to track the daily vital signs of patients and streamline patient-acquired data into one internet-accessible clinical dashboard.

When home care providers at VNA Home Health Hospice (VNA) looked at ways to improve their already-successful telehealth program, they realized patient care could be improved by giving physicians the ability to monitor their patients’ health status, using VNA’s existing telehealth system.

In January of 2011, the St. Alexius Medical Center (SAMC) and the Great Plains Telehealth Resource and Assistance Center (gpTRAC) joined forces to evaluate the potential of a new telehealth program. Their goal was to determine whether they could improve access and care for their many patients with chronic conditions who live in rural areas. In order to determine its effectiveness, SAMC and gpTRAC worked together to develop research parameters by which to quantify the results of the program.